Hard Rock and lightning

[sartorias]

Below is a riff I scribbled last June, when I was sitting in the Hard Rock cafe. I was accompanying some kids, and I'd thought the adjacent village of shops would be covered. Nope! But I'd brought along my notebooks, and before tackling the current p, wrote these notes, which I just rediscovered while clearing my desk

Comments

[starshipcat]

Oh, lordy, this is the sort of "artists are unstable" stuff that leads well-meaning parents to squash a young person's budding artistic talent "for their own good," thinking that if they can just force their beloved child to give up that scribbling, or doodling, or whatever and squeeze them into the mold of a productive little 9-to-5 suit, they can ensure their child's happiness and healthy long life.

I have many painful memories of my own parents' remarks about artistic instability and whatnot that, while on the surface were clearly impersonal observations, were by tone and other signals clearly intended as directives for me to make fundamental changes, even at the cost of my essential self. And never hearing the phrase "we love you" except as a means of inducing guilt, of making me feel like a total ingrate for not making the changes they wanted me to, for not giving up my dreams and learning to love the prosaic, the ordinary.

And there was no way to get them to understand that giving it up would be losing me, and that the thought

[sartorias]

True . . . yet how stable are we when the drive is at its strongest? I'm open to any ideas.

[starshipcat]

But is "stable" the be-all and end-all of human goodness, to which everything else should be sacrificed?

[sartorias]

I don't think so, and you don't think so, and i suspect most reading here don't think so, but we both know people who will stick to that firm conviction, no matter what. (Even if they can't quite define what "stable" really is, other than "not creative.")

[kateelliott]

[sartorias]

Thanks! Makes sense--that's what I wondered.

[pjthompson]

Makes complete sense. Very well done.

[jtglover]

No buses were missed in the thinking of the foregoing thoughts. :)

So much discussion of art and inspiration gets blown off as being airy-fairy or artsy-fartsy (or worse "not serious" or "unprofessional"), it ignores how powerful the experience is when you're on. Trying to pursue that former rush... Some authors or artists or musicians get criticized for repeating themselves, and I wonder if that doesn't tie into the rush as well. I got a rush from [X] (and people liked it), so why not try it again?

It's so hard to see art in the context it emerged if you weren't there. Catullus as a complete slap in the face to the Roman aristocracy. Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" wounding New Yorker readers who had no idea that could happen in a story... Easy to imagine, but hard to have that same thrill of experience.

[sartorias]

Yes, and oh yes.

Lord of the Rings, back in the mid sixties.

[jtglover]

Lord of the Rings, back in the mid sixties.

I've read various people's accounts of it, and I can only imagine the shock. Given the low profile of fantasy previously... what was going on in fiction in the '50s and early '60s... BOOM!

[sartorias]

Being a kid, I looked for that type of glory in kidzlit--Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series seemed to be the harbinger, which I checked out over and over--but LOTR written by an adult for adult readers, it was just a head explosion. (Especially for those of us writing that kind of fantasy because we weren't seeing any of it.)

[sartorias]

Very interesting thoughts--thank you!

[kalimac]

"Artists have to suffer" dates back to the romantic era, when Coleridge was drug-inspired and everyone from Keats to Poe died young.

What got added in the early 20th century was the notion that once the artist had suffered, the reader/viewer/listener had to suffer too.

I think we're finally getting over that one.

[faerie_writer]

the creative drive is an addiction. Creators=junkies?

TRUE! SO TRUE!

[sartorias]

*g*